Electronic books (e-books) and devices for displaying and manipulating e-books, known as e-book readers, are well known. E-books are typically embodied as electronic files, such as PDF (Portable Document Format) or ePub files, which may be protected from unauthorized copying using a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). For example, the ePub format supports combinations of text and images, along with DRM.
E-books are often consumable through software applications running on general purpose computing devices such as personal computers, laptops, tablet computers or smartphones. However, e-book readers, such as the Kindle™ by Amazon, the Nook™ by Barnes & Noble, and the Reader™ by Sony, are available that are purpose-built portable computing devices having a processing structure coupled to a display screen, one or more storage devices and a data interface such as a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port or a wireless network interface card to receive and display e-book files. Users of e-books access on-line e-book sources such as the well-known Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble websites and download e-books from the websites for consumption using their general purpose computing device and/or their e-book reader.
Where e-book readers are concerned, e-book content is typically displayed in black and white, with different shapes and sizes corresponding to the screen size and orientation of the e-book readers. It is typical for e-book readers to provide dedicated buttons for navigation through the e-book.
Publishers of e-books often avoid specifying restrictions on e-book layout characteristics in the e-book files, so as to allow e-book content to be displayed according to the attributes of the particular device being used to consume the e-book content. As such, the e-book reader or application is able to ensure an e-book is displayed according to the sizes and orientations of the display screen. However, e-books can be encoded so as to specify a particular layout. For example, particular page layout can be specified despite the display restrictions on the device. If, for example, a display device does not have sufficient resolution to show the entire e-book layout, the e-book reader or application can supplement by providing functionality for zooming in on the page.
While e-book readers are useful, many do not have a touch screen, and their screen sizes are typically small, usually varying between five (5) and ten (10) inches in size. As will be understood, the user experience is limited by the capabilities of the e-book reader itself. As such, software applications for displaying and manipulating e-books are available that ameliorate some of the limitations of the display devices. Such e-book applications can be provided with functionality for enhancing the user experience. For example, the FlippingBook™ Page Flip application offered by Page-Flip.com allows users to employ the mouse for flipping book pages when reading through an e-book. However, known examples of such applications tend to provide only very limited improvements to the reading experience, and accordingly do not approach the experience of reading a real book.
Interactive input systems that allow users to inject input (eg. digital ink, mouse events etc.) into an application program using an active pointer (eg. a pointer that emits light, sound or other signal), a passive pointer (eg. a finger, cylinder or other suitable object) or other suitable input device such as for example, a mouse or trackball, are known. These interactive input systems include but are not limited to: touch systems comprising touch panels employing analog resistive or machine vision technology to register pointer input such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,448,263; 6,141,000; 6,337,681; 6,747,636; 6,803,906; 7,232,986; 7,236,162; and 7,274,356 assigned to SMART Technologies ULC of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, assignee of the subject application, the contents of which are incorporated by reference; touch systems comprising touch panels employing electromagnetic, capacitive, acoustic or other technologies to register pointer input; tablet personal computers (PCs); laptop PCs; personal digital assistants (PDAs); and other similar devices.
Multi-touch interactive input systems that receive and process input from multiple pointers using machine vision are also known. One such type of multi-touch interactive input system exploits the well-known optical phenomenon of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR). According to the general principles of FTIR, the total internal reflection (TIR) of light traveling through an optical waveguide is frustrated when an object such as a pointer touches the waveguide surface, due to a change in the index of refraction of the waveguide, causing some light to escape from the touch point. In a multi-touch interactive input system, the machine vision system captures images including the point(s) of escaped light, and processes the images to identify the position of the pointers on the waveguide surface based on the point(s) of escaped light for use as input to application programs. One example of an FTIR multi-touch interactive input system is disclosed in United States Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0029691 to Han.
It is an object of an aspect of the following to provide improvements in the display and manipulation of e-books using a multi-touch interactive input system.